For years, the council has seen a trend: Connecticut residents are driving less and using mass transit more. That may be due to the Great Recession. It may be due to the realization it's easier to ride a bus or train than deal with commuter-clogged roadways.

This year, there's been a payoff. The council said air quality in the state is the best it has been in years.

"I didn't see this day coming," said Karl Wagener, the council's executive director. "Air quality is finally connecting to our personal impacts."

Whether it is because of environmental consciousness, or simply because people don't have as much money to operate their vehicles, state drivers are putting less rubber on the road.

"We peaked out around 2007, when the average state driver drove 25 miles a day," Wagener said. "Now it's down to 23.8 miles. That doesn't seem like a lot. But multiply it by a couple of million people, and it's a lot of miles."

There's also the large problem of dirty air coming into Connecticut on the winds up from the Northeast corridor or from the giant coal-burning power plants in the Midwest.

Gobin said people are driving much cleaner cars.

"It's very hard to do cause and effect," she said of looking at any one factor for cleaner air in Connecticut. "But it's great that people are driving less and using mass transit more."

The big bad issue the council has begun tracking is the severe storms the state is experiencing because of climate change.

As researchers have predicted, global warming doesn't mean Connecticut becomes Bermuda. It means a lot more moisture isin the air. Storms are getting more severe, with more flooding.

That doesn't just mean closed roads and wet cellars locally. Flood water, when it drains, heads into the Long Island Sound, carrying a lot of sediment and other pollution with it.

David Carey, chief of aquaculture for the state Department of Agriculture, said when storms hit in late July or August -- as Tropical Storm Irene did in 2011 -- sediment from beach erosion can harm clams and oysters spawning in the Sound.

Superstorm Sandy, which hit in October 2012, completely covered the shellfish beds in the Sound with a thick layer of sand, Carey said. It took a few weeks to dig them out, and some were too sand-clogged to sell.

Shellfish is a $30 million industry in Connecticut. Damaging it means damaging people's livelihood, as well as silting up the Sound.

"We need to look at what we're going to do,'' Carey said. "I don't know what it is."